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  The Nation's #1 Independent Veterans Web Site Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 07-07-2008 |
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The Nation's #1 Independent Veterans Web Site Click here to make VA Watchdog dot Org your homepage VA NEWS FLASH from Larry Scott at VA Watchdog dot Org -- 07-07-2008 |
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SOLDIERS -- "We're going back to cases that we put back on the shelf since the mid-'80s and we're resolving those cases now because of DNA."
Story here... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,376422,00.html Story below:
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Military Unit Combs World for Remains of U.S.
Soldiers
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During World War II,
thousands of Americans who fell in battle were buried in U.S. cemeteries
overseas. After the war, in 1947, the military established the Central
Identification Laboratory — the predecessor to JPAC — to search
battlefields for missing soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines and
repatriate their remains for burial here at home.
The laboratory continued its work through the Korean War and, after
Vietnam, added a new urgency.
"There was concern when the Vietnam War ended that there was potentially
live POWs," Holland said.
Renamed JPAC in 1991, the unit’s designation reflects the commitment to
employ the skills and tools of all four branches of the U.S. military, as
well as the U.S. Coast Guard, to their mission.
For
those serving in uniform, such as Lt. Lesley Alexander, a Navy aviator and
JPAC recovery team leader, this mission is great assurance.
"My husband’s a Marine pilot," she said. "Just knowing that if something
were to happen to him or to me that somebody would be out there looking
for us until all means were exhausted, it’s a pretty powerful feeling."
The numbers can seem daunting. More than 80,000 Americans remain missing
in action from World War II, 8,000 from the Korean War and almost 1,800
from Vietnam.
Moreover, their last known locations often are in harsh, inaccessible
terrain on steep mountains, dense jungles or at the bottom of the ocean.
And there are politics.
"Many of the places we go to simply cannot imagine that this country is
doing this," Holland said. "They cannot imagine that we are expending the
effort and the resources to find the remains of a private or a corporal.
So there’s a certain level of suspicion."
Today, the JPAC mission is undertaking its own revolution. It is now the
largest forensic skeletal laboratory in the world and the traditional
methods of searching the battlefield for dog tags and personnel effects
are augmented by new forensic technology, most importantly, DNA.
"We’re going back to cases that we put back on the shelf since the
mid-'80s and we’re resolving those cases now because of DNA," Holland
said.
Family members of those missing in action can submit DNA samples to JPAC,
whose members compare this genetic profile with unidentified tissue
remains.
Laverne Ransbottom of Edmond, Okla., knows well the work of JPAC. Her son,
Lt. Fredrick Joel Ransbottom, disappeared in action in Vietnam in 1968. In
2006, a JPAC recovery team found her son’s remains atop a remote mountain
near Vietnam’s border with Laos.
"I am eternally grateful and thankful to JPAC for this happening in my
lifetime," she said.
The motivation for the unit’s mission is simple.
"It’s a debt that this generation owes to the generation before it and
that the next generation will owe to the current one," Holland said.
Two-hundred-and-thirty-two years after our nation’s independence, JPAC’s
mission would make Paul Revere proud.
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posted by Larry
Scott
Founder and Editor
VA Watchdog dot Org
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